Joe's Service Panama

My going away party

2008-10-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

I left my town on October 7th. The weekend before my Panama Verde group organized a going away party with some money they had saved up. Several members of the community were invited as well as Panama Verde coordinators from out of town.

They decorated my house all morning and had a big stereo hooked up to a car battery. In total there was about 30 people crammed onto my porch. In this picture I am giving all of the Panama Verde books and documents to the President Aurelio.

Later we took a picture with all of our group members. Included in the photo are on the right. The Proffesora Mitzela from Changuinola who organizes all the group on a regional level and Arcadio, the head of a NGO called Alianza´s Bocas. I was very surprised that they came considering it was a weekend and 1 and a half hour ride from Changuinola.

We also had a more formal going away lunch at the US ambassador to Panama´s house. Tables were set with lots of silverware and delicious food!!! Seriously this was real good food even by US standards, I can´t believe the Ambassador gets to eat like this ALL THE TIME!
Here I am with the Ambassador Barbara Stephenson and the Peace Corps Country Director Peter Redmond.

Here is are whole group. Not so many have left, and all left within the first 6 months.

I´m off on my trip visiting South America.

New update on work and a short vacation

2008-08-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

As my last vacation in Peace Corps a bunch of good friends went to the Comarca Kuna Yala or San Blas. This is a different indigineous reservation located on primarily beutiful carribean island close to Columbia. There was delicious seafood in endless supply!

This was a freind we met who went spear fishing and got these two fish. Ryu is holding up a barrucuda. He said he shot them at 40 meters down using no air tanks!!

I took a recent trip to measure potentional water sources in more remote towns. These towns may be getting a aqueduct from the goverment in the futre. We measured the flow of the spring, the distance and elevation change from the houses. In some places there was fairly thick Jungle like above.
This is us measuring the flow rate. We cut up peaces of a banana tree to use as the make shift pipe. They worked fantastic. I also tried to teach the community members present how to use their watch to count the seconds needed to fill up the 5 gallon bucket and therefore measure the gallons per minute.
We had the inaguration for the Quebrada Cacao aqueduct. There was a religoius invocation, a brief history of the whole project. I spoke on how the project continues in their maintence and charging the monthly usage fee. I also read off some words from my boss. There was also a piñata!! I mad this out of a box and tissue paper. It lasted a beating!

Since I´ve been in site I´ve been selling condoms for 5 cents each. The UN gave a bunch of condoms to Peace Corps for free but we were told to sell them so there is some value associated with them. When ever someone comes to buy one I try to do a quick demonstration of their use on bananas. I have even walked around town in the afternoon when everyone (esspecially young guys) are playing sports and took the demonstration on the road.
I´m starting to try to tak more pictures with families I´m friendly with so i can develope them and give as gifts, and just for me.

A trip to build a composting latrine

2008-07-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I took a trip to help my friend Mo kick off her compost latrine project. I brought a tecnico from my town that has had years of experience building and maintaining composting latrines. He was kinda enough to come without pay because he really believes in the technology and wanted to see a new town.

Mo lives on an island near Bocas del Toro. Since it is illegal to take sand from any beaches in the area all the sand and materials had to be brought from the mainland. We left in a dug out wood boat. Water was pouring in though the sides because we were so weighed down, but we got there in one peace.
Here is the latrine after most of the first three layers of blocks have been laid. These latrines are built in places where a high water table exists so you can´t have a pit latrine.
The view at dusk of her town looking out towards Bocas del Toro.
The tecnico Benicio giving a talk on the proper use and common problems with the latrines. This was in my view one the most important parts of the whole 3 days. He gave his talk in Ngobe and used stories about his experience building nearly 30 latrines and how so many people like them in my town. Many of the other guys didn´t fully understand the concept until he spoke to them. You can see the ¨doors´s where you take out the composted excrement in the back.
Mo and the proud new owners of their latrine.

More Panama Verde and disaster strikes

2008-04-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

So the other day I went to buy some pipes for the two aqueducts that I am still buildings. I went with a member of the aqueduct committee to Changuinola where the hardware stores are and purchased several hundred dollars of PVC. I like this store because the delivery is free, this is a major plus when you live and hour and a half away from the nearest hardware store and half of that trip is off road. They have a very old flatbed drunk with broken glass, side windows that don´t work and no working knobs in the cab. After about half and hour on the highway a passing car flagged us down. When we pulled over our driver jumps out of the car swearing...

The whole battery is in flames and melting a mix of plastic and battery acid!! Apparently its thrown together wiring short circuited.

The Panama Verde environmental your group is still very active. After the regional camp kids in my town really wanted to do something big. They wanted to invite 4 other neighboring groups for a 2 day camp. I initially was skeptical and thought they didn´t know how much work goes into planning an activity like this. Regardless I told them that they could start planning it. After splitting the group up to right solicitation letters and going to the Changuinola to deliver them we received funding from the Hydroelectric dam company, the Mayor and the local town representative.
The mini-camp was all Ngobe, so our big activity was a hike with the local indigenous healers group. They explained what plants worked as cures for various ailments and how to prepare them. Much of this knowledge is not being passed down from the older generations to the young more hip kids. Part of this activity was hearing the same botanical group speak on Ngobe culture, traditional stories and what is was like living 70 years ago when there was nothing but jungle. (Elderly people in my town tell me about how jungle cats would eat their pigs!)

The majority of the camp occurred in the school. We ate in the school kitchen and everyone slept on the floor in classrooms. Other activities we did were a a talk about the composition of trash followed by a community wide trash pick up, a low ropes course, swimming and bathing in the river and at night we put on the DVD Planet Earth.
These are all the kids in my group. I was very impressed with how much they stepped up. Seeing how they are teenagers many times the goof off but when the responsibility was on they all delivered. Every one carried a huge load of firewood from there houses, large buckets of water to the school kitchen when the water went out, cleaned the bathrooms and maintained order amongst the members from other towns.
These are all the participants with their camp shirts and certificates.

Another activity we did was a beach cleanup in preparation for turtle nesting season. 25 kids plus 4 counselors piled into 2 dug out canoes for a trip to the barrier islands of San San Pon Sak. Before the beach clean up we were taken to a platform in the mangrove wetland to get a chance to see manatees!
They hang bananas in a hope to study the manatees. This was pretty much the extent that we saw.
To my surprise the beach cleanup did not exist of picking up trash. We moved large peaces of drift wood and seaweed clumps that could disturb nest turtles. The turtle conservation program at San San Pon Sak is protecting Leatherback Sea Turtles one of the largest in the world. They can be as large a 6 feet by 4 feet.

The conservation effort revolves around greatly improving the chances that turtles that hatch on there beach will reach adult hood. They do this by making the environment even better the what is naturally occurring. Even thought the turtles have powerful flippers they still can´t move large peaces of drift wood so its removed to improve there chances. When they come to lay eggs the people on the beach move the eggs to a secure nursery, so crabs and other wild life can´t dig them up.

Peace Corps Family

2008-04-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

Some times I think of Peace Corps Panama like a big extended surrogate family. This past weekend I attended the wedding ofTess Sparks. She was the volunteer in my town before me and also the tech trainer for our group of environmental health volunteers. She got married to a Panamanian architect named Gabriel in the old city of Panama.

St. Francis of Assisi Chapel was huge!
Flower children and ring bearers
The reception was at a Hindu Temple banquet hall on a large hill overlooking the city. There was a DJ a live tipico band. Later while most people were talking at there tables a brass band marched in! It was great to see so many people dancing and having a great time. The dance floor was full of surrogate family: the PC doctor, the directors of the various PC sectors, secretaries and language teachers even the country director and his daughter!

I also got to meet some volunteers that lived and worked around my area and settle some tall tales about them as well as update them on the big happenings in the area.

This past weekend was also Melissa and myself´s 1 year anniversary! We celebrated with champagne in a a nice hotel in Panama City.

In January (I know I have not updated the blog in a while) there was another familiar event when several people came to visit my town to see the work completed on the aqueduct. Above left to right there is the local mason, Tess (the one that just got married), the director of the Environmental Health program, the Waterlines ( the NGO sponsoring the project) mason and inspector, the Country director Peter Redmond, SpongeBob, and members of the a Rotary club which also sponsored the project.

They all came for the official inauguration of the aqueduct with the town. The whole town came out for a big party with two slaughtered pigs, official dedications, the story of how the aqueduct came to be and a piñata!

Words from the two bossmen, Peter Redmond and the aqueduct President Emilio.
This is Carmen, the local women´s group president with the Country Directors daughter. The women´s group gave many of their hand stitched bags as a token of appreciation.

Here´s the country director with most of his family walking the muddy trail to Nudobidi. He says they try to get out to visit people as much as is possible because it reminds the kids of what the country outside of Panama City is like. This was his family´s first time to a Ngobe community in Bocas del Toro.

Panama Verde Youth Camp

2008-02-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

The regional Panama Verde camp happened during January. About 12 different Panama Verde groups got together and the agricultural high school IPT Silencio for 5 days of ice breakers, trash pickup, talks on the environment and leadership and games! It was a great mix between Ngobe groups and Latino. There was even another indigenous group called the Naso present.

The people with green shirts on are the counselors. They are in their twenties and went from being in groups to part of the Panama Verde leadership, most are from more developed cities and are studying at a university and all work for free. Panama Verde has a saying ¨For youth, by youth¨ the only person over 25 in the whole group is the national director who is standing next to the guy in the wheel chair.

One of the confidence builders we did as part of the ropes course day. I didn’t do this but it certainly gave some of the larger kids confidence to hear all there teammates cheering them on. This is my group picking up trash. We broke up into 5 different colored groups and you had to wear your colors at all times. We had a great mix of loud, animated, and educated Latinos as well as more quiet reserved Ngobes. I think this is itself was a great learning experience. The kid with the part in his hair is from my town. This was his first trip ever out of town so you can imagine how intimidating all the ice breakers and goofy dances would be. He ended up doing a great job later as he gained confidence making jokes.

I did the camps with 2 other PC volunteers that have groups in Bocas. This was for a game similar to capture the flag that we played at night. We were giants and could tag kids and bring them to jail. In order for them to capture us they need 6 kids touching a leader at once. This was a great exercise in teamwork. The first round not one giant one captured. The second round they all hid in corners and alleys and came out in huge groups and ended up catching us all.

This is my group ¨The Claws.¨ If we lost our flag (which we did) we all had to do an embarrassing dance called the epileptic chicken... yeah its as strange as it sounds.

November is Panama Month

2007-11-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

November is the mes de Patrìa or month of the fatherland. On the 3 they celebrate independence from Columbia day, the 4th is flag day. They have big celebrations in the schools and with marching bands in larger towns. These girls are wearing sashes that indicate that they are in the top of their class.

This is the stage set up for the ceremonies of reading the declaration of independence and other historical documents and well as children reading poems and singing songs about their country.
On the 23 Valle celebrated the founding of their county. This is a big deal because most of the county is in the mountains people no longer need to pay to get to the larger town to settle land disputes, register to vote or register births. This is all done in my town which is the center of the coriegiemento (county). On the 23 the town council had a big party with activities during the day, and a big dance at night. The party started off with Cantadera, which is similar to freestyle singing. One was from Tolè which and spoke some ngobe in his singing, which everyone loved.

They start out introducing themselves each in turn, then the sing about how they love women and past exploits. Later they merged into about how they are truly from the countryside and how they always work in their farm, this turns into complaints about the rising cost of rice, sugar, gas and the general cost of living (which is true). They then went on to get more confrontaional with the Hijo de la Comarca (Child of the reservation) going to far to make hints that they are on his land. Overall the atmosphere was very freindly and they applaud one another if they sang some poignent lines. One of them even mentioned Peace Corps a few times so he was clearly improvising.

Then tipico band started playing. They seemed like true road warriors. All of their equipment has seen some obvious use. Considering everything was brought in on a 4 wheel drive truck they sounded good. The music is very accordian based and the singer Edwin Seballo is popular with Ngobes because he has a few songs centering around Ngobe phrases. The band played till around 4 AM which many people thought was quitting to soon. After 2 cups of coffee I couldn´t stay awake past 2.

This is a random picture of how you get to my friend Mo´s Latrine. And really all the latrine is a private spot you can poop in the mangrove swamp. You need to hop from board to board!

Novemeber 2nd is the Day of the Dead. Where most of the town gets together to remember the dead. Wealthy people get raised graved above while others get the plants with red leaves. As my town is quite big there are lots of graves.
The is my sister placing flowers on the grave of her grandfather, one of the founding fathers of the town.
No minister was present so they asked me if I could give the opening prayer, I did but chickened out and gave it in English. On the other hand, I don´t regulary speak about religion so i´m not used to the vocabulary.
November is also the month to harvest cacao!! This is a pile of mallorcas which they crack open to and take out the seeds. After the that the seeds are dried, ground and sugar and milk is added to make chocolate.

FOOD!

2007-11-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

For a period of about a week I had several guests over for various reasons. With the help of Melissa we cooked some amazing food with the little we could in the jungle.

These are my new neighbors Greg and Lisa, the are from Philly and live about and hour away. We made pizza with them. We made the dough from scratch used American singles, and cooked it in a frying pan with aluminum foil as a lid.

This is Sebastien, he was visiting interested in doing some research. He works with the Smithsonian Insititute on Bocas Island, and is researching an improved septic system for places with high water tables and clayey soil where black water filters in VERY slowly. He is also from Belgium and makes amazing crepes.

Heres our breakfast creps, including all the toppings. Scrambled eggs, bananas, peanut butter etc.

Later I went to visit a freind Mo to help survey her aqueduct. She is a vegetarian and knows how to make a mean salad. This was my first succesful experience with tofu.
Lastly, another friend Jess came from the other side of the country to do research on her masters thesis. She was measuring pH and temperature of all the 40 composting latrines in my site, then took samples from 5. The idea is to check if they are successfully killing all pathogens and to see what moisture level and dry material is the best. She made chicken parm. Without the chicken or parmesean. Instead she used crushed ritz crackers, egg and soy meat made into patties. Excellent!

We also made banana pancakes from scratch. Mashing up bananas sure makes your batter go along farther. You can also Johnny Cakes which are very popular because you can back them of a fire.

Swear in and 1 year celebration

2007-10-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

The new group of Environmental Volunteers just swore in with a ceremony at the Panama Canal Museum. The US Ambassador spoke about the importance of Peace Corps in Panama.

Ambassador Eaton with our Country Director.

As a group we took a vacation to go to the Royal Decamoran all inclusive resort to celebrate surviving one year in country. The above picture was in the swim up bar. This was also a great chance to catch up with other volunteers that live far away and to exchange ideas. For example I learned of a business volunteer that is buying a machine that automatically takes the shells off rice. It sits in the bed of a truck, to operate you jack the wheels off the ground and use the car engine to turn the motor. This is a great example of using local resources and also the rice peeler will go where the rice is.

This is one of the main pools and the discoteca at night. It was a wild time!

Go Sox!

2007-10-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Friends from home ask, were you able to catch the Sox game? I did catch them beating the Indians at my house with my crank radio. My host brothers and I listened to the TV broadcast on the radio cause there is less adds and you can here crowd noise. The antenna on the radio has long been broken off and to get the best reception I had a piece of wire attached to the radio and tucked behind my ear.

Not all Peace Corp Volunteers are roughing it in the jungle. This is my friend Kelly's house. She is a volunteer and lives in a much more developed community. She has a fridge, oven, dishwasher and flush toilet!!
My Panama Verde group planted tree in the water shed of the town aqueduct to prevent erosion during large rains.
I am still working on the aqueduct tank. Here is Jose putting on the water proof mortar inside the tank.

Tuning in to the Sox broadcast.
Later in the night playing dominoes , sharing Night Train and still listening. VICTORY!!
Even Melissa is supporting the Sox. This was in Panama City for game one of the world series.

Building a 3300 gallon tank

2007-10-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Brandon recently just changed sites. So I have been living there during the week to help finish his aqueduct tank. This is 3300 gallon tank made with 8 inch blocks, which is almost unheard of in Panama. These blocks were donated by the US Army and I think are actually made in the USA.

That is my friend José who is also a very experience mason, I work with him all the time. He is also the President of one of the aqueducts in my town.
Me and Brandon during construction.
Our construction inspector. A lazy bear, or sloth, just hanging out.

These blocks are really hard to split without a saw. This meant there are larger spaces between them with we filled with mortar. The tank is 8 feet tall.
Mixing mortar.
Sieving sand by hand. You can't have any rocks in the mix. We had some kids helping out with the work.
That's our make shift scaffolding we set up. The last foot of that steel will be bent over to and attached to the steel in the roof.
That bandanna may look ridiculous but it was REALLY hot working in the sun.

Fresh Pork and Certificates

2007-10-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

A WARNING: There are some pictures of a pig being slaughtered below. Beware. I'm busy so these will have short captions.

Just finished hiking up this super steep hill for 30 minutes. You know your in for a serious hike when the Ngobe your with gets a walking stick.

I got pretty sick for a few days drinking this water. This is what it looks like when we get heavy rain, the aqueduct is creek fed so all the sediment gets washed in. Normally I filter this and its fine but that night I was staying up late to help with this pig and drank some coffee from my host family forgetting about all the rain.
My two host brothers. I don't know why Justin is wearing that santa clause hat. Right before this happened my uncle, Benito, hit the pig with the blunt end of an axe to stun it so it wouldn't squeal alot.
After it is killed you put boiling water on the skin then peal all the hair off with a knife. Then take the insides out. I didn't actually really do anything besides keep the water boiling and shine flashlights for them.

The water committee seminar came to my town and the theme was protecting your watershed. This is a guys from my town that runs this vivero or place where you keep trees before planting them. He spoke about the importance of reforestation to keep water in the ground and then talked about how you actually plant the small trees. Later in the day as a group we went and planted several small trees donated by the Bocas Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Banana.
These are the guys that I work with. There are 3 committees here. My town has two aqueducts then the one I built next door has a group too.

These are pictures at the last day of the seminar with all the participants and there diplomas.

My first entry in forever!

2007-09-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hey, finally I have gotten a camera, and a chord and the free time to upload pictures. So much stuff has happened of recently. A Province wide aqueduct seminar has been started for all the communities where there is Peace Corps. Right now 9 aqueduct committees meet every other Saturday in different PC communities. We talk about accounting, working with agencies, leadership, system repairs, positions in a committee and watershed management.

I think the most important thing that the groups can take from these classes are the confidence and know how to actually collect aqueduct fees and cut off water for those that done´t pay. It has been very rewarding and much work as I am working with 3 committees; my town has two aqueducts and I am also working with the town where I just finished building the aqueduct. Each week there is homework, and this upcoming weekend Valle will host about 30 visitors for the seminar.

This is a picture from the leadership day, we played a bunch of games to emphasis leadership and communication. This is Pata Grande, or Big Foot. They loved it one of the Valle committees won the tournament.

My Panama Verde group is still working. We decided to raise our vivero (tree nursery) off the ground so bugs would eat the leaves less. We cut down a bunch of caña blanca and built this table. It poured half way through the work.

These are the guys that built it and the baby trees in the black bags. We are currently trying to sell them as the make excellent wood for host posts. I always talk to people and tell them that planting trees can be seen as an investment and how responsible fathers (or mothers for that matter) should plant trees for each child, that way when the child is ready to build there own house that they have wood. Although the jungle can be thick where I live the real thick trees are getting farther and farther away.

This is me with the Honorable Representative. He is from my town and is the head politicó for our county. He is a very friendly guy but does not always provide me with much information. I look forward to working with him because he has many potential sources of money set up for various projects. The other day the two of us went to the Ministry of Health together to talk about a possible water project. I was very valuable because I feel like it legitimized me in the eyes of the Ministry.

The hydroelectric dam company AES celebrated in a big, expensive way the inauguration of the house the completed for the first relocated family. This house was built in a manner of a wealthier family in the Provincial capital, it was also completed with very few local materials and labor. All in all I heard that is costs around $40,000 to build and do to the high cost the dam company will no longer be building houses in the same way for the dozens of families that will have there towns flooded out by the new lake. This has been a huge issue in my town. Although the dam is not directly effecting my community it has indirect effects. I believe that the company has good intentions and has conducted serious social projects but the presence of a multinational corporation in an severally impoverished area will always have side effects.

There were 3 newspapers there and a television channel. They killed two cows for food for all the guests. Many of which were trucked in from the communities directly effected. It was also weird because many of the guests worked for the dam company or their sub-contractor. They also brought in Panamanian traditional dancers and clowns. I think the clowns scared most of the people because not only are they not too familiar, but they also were scary looked girls. Seriously, there makeup, clothes and music really frightened me.
Here is my host sister, who has just learned to say my name, playing with one of the massive playground balls donated by Camp Belknap.

On the way to the Volunteer Advisory Committee (I am the representative for Bocas) meeting I visited my friend Rob. He lives deep in the Native Reservation. After a 2 hours truck ride up in the mountains we walked for another hour in the beautiful country side. This is a picture of some of my best friends here. Melissa, Rob and Kevin.

new pics finnally!

2007-07-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

So many news things sense the last update. My dad left me his digital camera, but didn´t have the connecting cable. Sorry for not putting a post up in a long time. The biggest thing that happened in this time was an environmental fair in my town. Several different communities and organizations built huts to display artisan works and sell fruits. Government organizations also came to talk. My Panama Verde group made our own house, out of resources everyone in the group donated. One kid gave some nails, another used house posts, another 25 cents to make juice for those working.

My friend Colin and I gave a charla (talk) on nutrition during the eco-fair. We broke the food pyramid into 4 basic groups so it was more applicable. Basic base food, go food, glow food and grow food. After explaining what they were and examples we had all sorts of food drawn out on little peaces of paper and had a race to see who could properly placed the food. After the race we had a big discussion about the importance of some foods and not others.
This three towed sloth was hanging out in the rancho next to me. Apparently they were planning a sloth wedding. As this lady sloth was dressed in the traditional clothes, they also were going to have music and a ceremony. She moved much faster than I thought, but still no amazing speed. The male below was a two towed sloth and appeared to like to hang out upsidedown. After all the hype the sloth wedding didn´t go down because the man wripped his shirt off and couldn´t wait anymore.

Soccer season ended. Our team kinda petered out toward the end, but it was still a fun time playing and I definitely made a whole bunch of friends. The other night two guys invited me to go spear fishing with them in the river. It was moonless and we used flashlights underwater to find fish. Needless to say I barely saw any fish let alone killed them. This is my volleyball team. Most of the people aren´t from my town but those teams were full. We play every Sunday. I have been practicing alot but and still not up to their expectations as the tall guy. The hydroelectric company gave all the jerseys to 14 teams from the county.
Our Panama Verde youth group sent 3 kids to a national camp on the other side of the country. I walked out with two of them to save money. Here is a shot from the top of the mountain. Recently I have been doing an aqueduct study up there. In the background you can see Bocas Island.

I took a trip to Bocas Island for our regional meeting. I went the less traveled way from Changuinola. You take a motor boat through the old banana canals cut through the mangrove. It was really beautiful, as we flew at full speed down this narrow stretch.

I officially inaugurated my house, because it is 100 percent done. I made 6 pounds of fried rice (uncooked),l for my entire host family and the uncle that redid my roof. We all sat around the table at my house like a family dinner in the states. This is a rare here, usually people eat the food as soon as they receive it and don´t talk when eating. Here you can see the yellow table I got from the Army and the big table a different uncle made for me out of cedar.

New pics!

2007-06-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here are a bunch of photos that I took with a spare camera I brought just in case something happened to my digital. They had to be scanned so the resolution may not be that great, but there something new.

Here are some pictures pouring the concrete in the roof of the tank. This is I feel where I used my engineering most so far. I had to make sure that the reinforcing steel was at the right level and the cement was properly placed. You can see in this photo I have a trowel and hammer to make sure the cement gets under and around all the steel and there is no air pockets.

To make the top you first make a really big table inside the tank. This supports the weight of workers and cement before it dries. Then you put up boards on the outside to act as walls to keep the cement in. You can see the table top that I´m standing on above.

This series of pictures (I don´t know what happened with the last one.) Roughly shows how you mix concrete in Panama, or any place where you don´t have a concrete mixer. First you mix you sand, gravel and cement when its dry. Then you make a "volcano" out of this and slowly add water to the top of the volcano. After waiting for a while so the water can seep down you mix it and begin to open the volcano up. Eventually if done properly the is no more liquid water just wet cement that won´t spill out. If done improperly the water can spill out and take much cement with it.
We built this roof to cover the cop because it poured a few times during construction. We didn´t want the cement to get to watery.

This is a different tank. In my town we have two aqueduct tanks. The first is higher and older and works fine. The second is less than a year old and is lower, and has several small leaks. The aqueduct committee has been meaning to fix this for a while but had no funds to buy the cement and sand needed. I got about 6 bags of cement from the US Army as they were leaving, and worked out a deal where the community would carry fine sand for a house being built down the road, where cars couldn´t got in exchange for some of the fine sand.

These pictures are of the first day of work where we chiseled a hole in the wall for a drain cleanout (the tank had none) and then washed the sand and gravel filter inside. It was almost like being in one of those water playgrounds at a waterpark.

New pictures, kinda

2007-05-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

Well not having my camera has put a serious damper on my blog. Just an update on somethings. I´m still working on getting materials from the Army, through US Aid.
I´m going to start building my 4000 gallon tank this week after bringing up 360 6" cinder blocks, 60 rebar, and 66 sacks of cement. My soccer team is still undefeated.

I recently found these pics on the web of my site and my host mom. They are done by a professional photographer. The second picture is my host mom, her shirt is stained from the juice of banana trees. Word of warning next time you harvesting bananas that stuff stains! The rest of the pictures are from my site, or the town next door where I am building my aqueduct.

http://www.andrewlamoreaux.com/main.php

Bad news

2007-04-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

Bad news is that i got my camera and ipod stolen from my bag in an internet store. I was in the big mall and bus terminal in Panama City and had left them my bags with a friend while i went to the bathroom. When I came back to leave the bags were all in the exact same spot but my camera and ipod were missing. I spoke with the Peace Corps safety and security officer and filed a official report but there is not much I can do.

I am much sadder about my ipod because I was just getting into podcasts to stay up to date on news sports and other stuff. My camera was really old and I brought it to Panama expecting for it to be destroyed by the weather. This means my blog will probably seriously be lacking until my family comes down with my other digital camera.

Soccer and a trip to the Peninsula

2007-04-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

Its official! My soccer team, Alianza de Riscó is in first place with a record of 5 - 0. There are 11 teams playing in the coregiemento (county) league. We play every Sunday in my town and some team walk for more than an hour or take buses to play. My team is made up of the teenagers that play futbolista or small sided soccer on weekdays. Some of them come of as being punk that aspire to be reggaeton stars, but most have warmed up.
Here we are after or Easter Sunday victory. I am in the upper right corner in a Portugal Jersey. For a while I was borrowing a red shirt from a teammate when I decided that of all the people on the team I shouldn´t be borrowing a shirt so I went out and got a $7 replica. I´m still learning on how to match my style of soccer which is very rigid about positions and focused on passing and moving the ball to space which their style of holding on the the ball as long as possible. It is almost a metaphor for the combination of cultures. I think I can bring alot to the team simply because I recognize where I should be to receive a pass or to guard a defender. On the other hand I don´t always receive any passes because my teammates like to dance with the ball.

As you can see it was muddy this Sunday. The field gets played on just about everyday which really does a number on the grass. This was by far the muddiest soccer I have ever played. My cleats were so watered down and caked with mud that I almost kicked one off. The ball would also hardly roll anywhere and you had to advance it in the air. In this pic you can see a free kick, the goal made out of bamboo, and handmade net and the rain clouds receding from the valley.
Another shot of the mudpit. You can see in the background several small casitas. This is wear spectators gather to watch, the league president, keeps track of substitutions and score, and people sell food. I love Sundays because there is always people to talk to as well as empanadas, and duros (frozen juice in a baggy), this is the only time of the week that you can get these delicacies.

This past week we had our regional meeting out on the Peninsula of the Comarca (Indian Reservation). It is a beautiful place with many beaches. It was a combined meeting with Bocas and the Comarca so there was almost 50 volunteers out for this event. This a shot when the group was leaving. The volunteer that was host the meeting chartered a boat that could fit about 35 volunteers and their bags. The boat was cut out of one massive tree!!
It was kinda raining when we left, and we ended up covering ourselves in a tarp to protect us from the splash of waves and rain. The Country Director was also out for the meeting which was a big deal.

I visited my friend Melissa´s site to help her with her aqueduct and encountered some of these kids with a carro. It was a 55 gallon drum with a hole cut in it. I figured I take it for a spin!

Is this a good idea?? I bet this can roll over really easily.

And I crashed into the fence, this was so much fun. Probably the closest thing to sledding in Panama. I highly recommend you do this if you get the chance.

A sunset from Melissa´s porch over Bahía Azul.
Melissa´s kitchen. It is tiny! Her whole house is about the size of my bedroom, but it is definitely sufficient. We made some delicious curried soy with rice and peanut butter.
This is Jack´s house. He lives across the bay. He has any amazing view of the ocean, and accordingly has really cool windows that fold up. We had two days of Ngobe language class here.

In other news today is Easter and so the end of my fast of soda, candy, chips and sweet breads. It was much harder than I expected because sometimes when you are tired and hot a cold Coca Cola from a glass bottle sounds so good.

I went to visit the US Army base. I met some interesting people especially some reservists from NH that included alot of Bostonians with thick accents. I need to return there to find out if and how much materials they can donate.

I SHOOK THE PRESIDENTS HAND!!

2007-03-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

The President said he was going to come for the inauguration of the new school... and he actually did!!!

As you can see Valle was packed. There was about 20 cars of people from the hydroelectric dam, National Police, different government organizations, and education officials.

After much waiting in the hot sun the sound of a helicopter became audible and it roared over the new school to land on the soccer field.

Right after this picture above was taken the President Martin Torrijos walked towards the school. He shook some peoples hands. I greeted him with a ¨Hello. How are you?¨ He replied back in English that he was good and wanted to know how long I had been in Valle. He obviously knew I was Peace Corps and speaks perfect English because he studied at Texas A and M.

There was tons of media there. You can see in this photo the people at the main table. The guy in the blue striped shirt in the Director of FIS - Fundación de Inversión Social, (Social investment fund). This is the government organization that gave funds to build the school. They primarily work in impoverished areas. The next guy is the National Director of MEDUCA which is the Ministry of Education. El Presidente is next. The guy in green is a teacher from my town officially welcoming them.
The Pres appear a little exhausted. I think he must have woke up very early and was a little overwhelmed by the heat. Next to him is Deputado Benicio Robinson. He is sporting the Bocas baseball hat and is kinda like a senator of the province.
The gringo looking guys in hats are from the hydroelectric company. They announced that they would be improving the health center in town, by adding a full time doctor and hospital beds. The last guy is the new director of the school. He is great and really personable. Later that day the President had payed for 2 cows to be killed and essentially food for the whole town. The Director and myself were talking about NBA and he was saying how he doesn´t really like all the new players and that Jordan, Bird and Magic are the all time best. We also talked about the movie Blood Diamond.

Lots of media completely blocking the students view.

Me and my buddy Kevin in front of the Presidential Helicopter.
My host brother Ochoa next the the Presidential Seal.
The new computer lab that is part of the school. They got 24 new computers all with DVD players, optical mice, flat screen and internet. There is also a scanner, wireless router and digital projector.
The Pres touring the new school.
A final shot of the main man himself.

In other news, on a recent trip to Bocas Island I ran into some US Army soldiers that are on a humanitarian mission in Bocas. They are building schools, roads and health posts. I was chatting small talk with an engineer and he asked me where money for projects comes from. I explained to him the Peace Corps does not provide money and that we get it from NGOs and friends and family through Peace Corps Partnership. He told me that he has loads of materials that he needs to donate to a certified NGO before they leave in a month. After some talks between the country director and Army personal it has been approved. This week I will go to their temporary base camp and see what they are willing to donate.

Panama Verde Camp

2007-03-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago the was a Panama Verde camp in a town down the road from me. Panama Verde is a environmental youth group that some volunteers have in their sites. I brought four kids from my town.
We hiked for about an hour to this waterfall. Initially many kids had pena (shy) about going in the water but eventually almost all did. They had a great time and I think the majority had never seen a water fall. In this picture is Colin in the sunglasses, Adam, Melissa, and Maria. You may notice that all the girls essentially swim in regular clothes, this is customary so female volunteers can´t wear bathing suits in their sites.

The other day a camera crew came from a channel 12 news based out of Panama City. They were filming a documentary and conservation and ANAM they government ministry that protects the forests. In the foto is a girl that sang a song about caring for the environment and one of the stores in my town. The guy in the long hair did a juggling act and really impressed everyone one in town although he only juggled 3 clubs.
In this picture you can see what is left of the rancho that was constructed when we were building the toma. More importantly you can see part of the 30 meter cable bridge that is suspending the 1 and 1/2 inch PVC pipe. We built this bridge to go around part of the hill that will most likely landslide. Obviously you can´t bury a pipe in a landslide zone. Here is a picture of Benicio digging out some of the ditch for the tube. At this time the tube has arrived at the tank and hopefully at the town in two days. On average it is about a foot underground, but will be more when going through pasture where cows can break pipe up to two feet underground when its muddy.

This is the famous human knot game we were playing with my group at the camp. I was assigned to 7 kids from different indigenous communities in the province. They choose to be called the Lions and all had to where their colors all weekend. I really liked most of the kids in my group they seemed to get along and have no problem participating. We did many games like this one including tug of war, sing along songs, and a blind folded trust walk.
Here is the four kids I took from my town with their official certificates that they attended the camp (its a big deal to them). Also in the foto is Sarah, who organized the whole camp and Ennio the financial director of Panama Verde. Everything at the camp is payed for as well as transportation. The money ultimately comes from the Kellogg's Foundation.
Here is some group members planting saplings. We showed them how to mix native clayey soil with sand and compost to make and ideal soil to grow in.
Here is another shot of Adam helping teach kids how to apply the compost without burning the roots of the sapling. I actually learned alot at this camp too! I didn´t exactly know how to plant trees!
Juan, myself and Joel at the waterfall.

Around the house and a new aqueduct

2007-03-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

Besides that aqueduct in the town next door I have also been working on developing two other potential aqueduct projects. The Representante has his eyes set on building an aqueduct in far away from town where I think he has family. There are only a few houses there, and he things he can bring water from a spring, or creek, to my town which is about at 25 minute walk on flat ground. The water source has yet to be identified. However, he is willing to spend money so, I want to be a part of the team to make sure it is built properly. We walked out there the other day with a community member, the Representante and an engineer from the municipality.

I also may follow up a proposal for an aqueduct in another neighboring community, and have plans to visit them in 2 days.

This is the poso, or open well, that they were drinking out of. The water apparently comes up from under the ground here, but it is very unsanitary because rain water washes off poop from farm animals right into the same water. Ducks and other birds also swim in it. I recommended that the fence it off and build a drainage canal to divert runoff but who knows if they will do it.
They identified this creek as a possible water source. It is important to measure water sources in the dry season (now) because when it is raining they sometimes appear to be plentiful and can practically dry up during this time of year. To measure water you make a dam out or leaves and mud, and channel water in the a 5 gallon bucket. This can give you gallons per minute.
This is the area where we may provide water. It is essentially one big family with about 6 houses.
These guys were my guides back the the trail. Crossing this river stands to be a major problem because with normal rains it rises, 5 ft and with floods it overflows the bank.

My host sister Juanita, left forever. She was one of my best friends in town, and was a great worker. I also paid her to do my laundry, and she would always help look for sawdust for the composting latrine, or help me with my garden. She left to live with her dad, way up in the mountains of the Indian Reservation. I think this will be a really hard change from her, especially because she had become accustomed to having expendable income. She spent most of her money on batteries for her radio, and good percentage on food for the family and some for new clothes.
This is my host sister Gaylena, she is just learning to walk and is really cute.
Another picture of them working on my roof. I have been really busy with the aqueduct so havn´t really had time to help out. You can see all the penca they had stacked up to do roof. My uncle Dario is up in the roof constructing.

The night before Juanita left we killed two of the three chickens she was raising. I helped by holding the bird down while someone else cut the neck with a knife. It was really primal.
This is my host family, pretty much everyone in this picture has left except for the kid on the far left and the older guy in the hat.
One night I was getting ready to go to bed in my house and my host broth Justin hollered at me and told me that ants were attacking the tree between our houses. These cutter ants form a highway, that you can literally see. There is so much ant traffic that thy push dirt to one side. They cut parts of leaf off the tree, and bring it back to their mound where fungus grows on it that they eat. Essentially they grow their food. Anyways, they can really cause damage to trees and even kill them in some cases. I sprayed the trunk of the tree with some peace corps issue 25 % DEET OFF, and it was like a wall. They ants couldn´t cross, so they couldn´t destroy they tree any more. I did feel bad that as a environmental volunteer I was using harsh chemicals, but I want my shade!

Bocas Baseball

2007-02-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to my first Panamanian Baseball game. The national league has started up. Each province has a team, my host brothers and several people in my town are obsessed and listen to the games till midnight, on their radios. Bocas was undefeated with 4 wins to some formidable opponents. On Tuesday they played Veraguas, who is also undefeated. The car from the Junta Comunal ( town committee) charged a dollar for round trip. (This is an incredible bargain because usually one way to Changuinola is about $3. We packed about 17 people into this covered pick up and headed for the stadium. I had big expectations as the stadium is the first thing visible when you come into town as well as its bleachers behind home plate. However when we arrived the announced the bleachers were not done being constructed. This is classic Panamanian style, they have had a year to finish the bleachers, and they aren't ready so they probably are losing half of their seating (or standing) capacity.
Sorry these pictures came out bad it was hard shooting with the lights. The game was like a little league game, but with wild fans. At one point after an inning a Bocas player right ran over to where I was standing, whipped out his change pouch from his back pocket and gave a friend or family money to buy food. There was so much more fan-player interaction it was pretty cool.
The fans were wild. It reminded me of being at a typical Latin American soccer game. Maestro Ramòn and I were right next to the guy with the megaphone. He would either blast the siren for an entire at-bat or just shout ¨¡Ponchelo! ¡Curvalo! ¡Si puedehombe!¨(Bocas spanish has alot of Caribbean island influence from Jamaica, so lots of sortof english is spoken) Air horns where the norm as well as whistles. There was also a drum band that sounded great and they would blast reggaeton, meringue and other music between innings. The games also have 50 cent beers and $1 meat on a stick and 25 cent banana chips, and entrance is only $2. Bocas ended up getting blown out but it was still a great time. I just felt like putting in a picture of the main street in Changuinola. Today was a rare rainy today in the dry season. The street is lined mostly with Almacenes which are department stores.

Since I´ve been living in Valle, my thatch (Penca) roof has been leaking. This is especially a problem because I live in the rainiest province in Panama, that can get downpours everyday for a month. My family helped with this situation by putting peaces of sheet metal roofing over my bedroom. This worked quite well, and also kept out bats, rats (to a certain extent although I still see them in my room at night sometimes) and any basura falling from the the roof. So my host family has been saving up my $20 monthly rent to buy new Penca and have it replaced.

So for the next 2 to three weeks all of my belongings are in bags or just piled on to one side of my house, while the other side is being worked on. This also means I can´t live there because there is constantly stuff falling from the ceiling. To make a roof, they find this tree that has massive leaves, that look like palm fronds. Each frond is about a meter long. They split the leave in two, so there and then stack them to dry. Once they are dry they are placed, and tied on almost horizontally. So on the inside all you can see are the main stalks.

The other day we went to go clean the toma de agua for my part of town. Toma de agua literally means take of water, so its wherever you channel water from a natural source into a pipe. The one we just built is with is from an underground spring. This is from a creek. That means that all sorts of junk can fall into the the pipe and ultimately the tank. Also it means the water can be contaminated much easier from surface water runoff.

You can see the dam and the 3 inch pip coming out of it here. In this picture is my counterpart Vicente (President of the aqueduct) and Maestro Ramòn, who is a teacher and President of the Health Committee.
On the dam you can see a wire cage used to filter out the largest leaves and other trash.
They are essentially just stirring the water up and pushing the settled mud into the tube. They had disconnected the pipe just after the dam so all this muddy water didn´t flow into the tank.

Some random pics

2007-02-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

We had our in service training a few weeks ago. One night we went to this bar that had MASSIVE SOMBREROS. This picture stands to tell the size of these. Needless to say I kinda cut up my forehead because it was like having a wicker basket rubbing up against your face.

The NGO that is funding the majority of our aqueduct came to visit about a month ago. I just got these pics from a friend. You can see in the backround what the toma looked like before we put the final cement cap on.

Here is a picture of Greg, the director of the Environmental Health sector in Panama (my boss) on the right. Next is Father Roberto ¨Niggity Kree¨and his niece Ashton. They all hiked up to the toma, to check it out. Roberto lives in Mexico and follows up on the work that a NGO called Waterlines. They provide funding for many water projects that PC Panama does. I was lucky to have they previous volunteer in my site solicit money from them, so I didn´t have to do any of the fundraising leg work.

Talking about the toma design.

Dimly lit picture of the whole group that came including Byron from Rotary Club international who is also provided much of the funding for the project.

In other news I had a great weekend. On Saturday I helped clean out the two aqueduct tanks that give water to my house. The amount of sludge and leaves and crap that was in the tanks was pretty gross considering I drink that water directly. I even found tadpoles in one of the tanks! We cleaned them out with dish soap and chlorine, and I explained to them how they can use the older higher tank as a primitive sedimentation tank to clean most of the basura from the water.

After that I played in a soccer tournament in my town. I played for the Valle team, they are really good ball handlers but don´t spread the ball around the field or pass much. It kind of reminded me of litter kids soccer when they all bunch around the ball. Anyways my team ended up winning, I also got a free meal out of it. Later that day I signed on to play in the soccer league that is going to start in March. The league has about 8 teams from around my county and most games are played in my town because it has a field with nets. It is mostly teenagers but some older guys play too.

In the night we all went to the corregiadoria, which is the equivalent of a town hall. Since my town is the center of the county this is where are business goes down such as registering to vote or registering births and settling disputes. They have a solar panel and a battery hooked up to a tv there. At night 20 people from town crammed into this wood building to watch Panama vs Costa Rica in the Central American soccer tournament. Panama ended up losing in penalty kicks.

Party in Casco Viejo

2007-02-11T11:39:00.000-08:00

This weekend we went to a fellow volunteer Victoria's, house in Casco Viejo of Panama city. Her parents just moved down here to renovate an old house. This part of the city was the first founded but was burned down whenCaptain Morgan attacked. As a UN world heritage site it is full of old stone churches and interesting buildings. However it is also dangerous to go out at night because it is for the most part very poor. There was a bunch of volunteers at the party as well as the habitants of the building. Most of them were retired people from the states, but all very interested in Peace Corps.

Rob, Jacob and Michelle rocking out.

Some of the best food that I will have all month. The sangria was excellent too.

Kevin, myself and Ryu rocking out to the Talking Heads. Its a tradition!

There was an illuminated fountain in the middle of the courtyard. And a sweet bar too.

We switched shirts so I could be wearing all red. I had on my bright red Santa Claus shorts.
Stacey, Melissa, Mo, Justin and Brandon.

Finishing the toma de agua

2007-02-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Before I left for in service training we finished the toma. The basic idea of the toma is to channel the water from a natural spring into a pipe. You design them so the water never is out in open air. This prevents rainwater runoff and animals from getting into the water system. They are challenging to make because no too are alike.

This is the sort of jungle frog I see usually once or twice when I´m hiking up to the toma.
Here you can see the toma, you can tell how steep the area immediately above the toma is. I am nervous that a landslide could harm the toma but don´t want to disturb it any more because it has a good rock base. We are planning on planting an anti erosion plant called sote caballo. That is a two in pipe coming out, we used this to keep the construction area relatively dry.
Here is a real pretty picture of the toma. You can see the actual spring box. Two times a year the top (not present) will be taken off and it will be cleaned of any silt they may have accumulated. You can also see the two overflow pipes. Normally this spring puts out about 30 gallons a minute which is a very high flow for one spring. However after a large rainstorm or series of rainy days the flow can get as high as 60 gpm! and that is only when I have been measuring! For this reason I put two overflow pipes because you can cause permanent damage if the water backs up into the actual spring, because water will travel underground and find a new exit.
These are the three major players that show up to work every day. Emilio, Jose and Ramon. Emilio carried up a 100 pound cement, and then went to go get more sand, that day.

Special shout out to the Rotary Club International who provided the funds for the project.
Here is a view from the toma looking at the jungle. You can see the rancho where we would eat lunch and ladies would make coffee. This is also where we all gathered when it started pouring rain.

They are laying the form work and rebar for the spring box lid.

Cows and Cacao

2007-02-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

Hey, right now I'm in Panama City. I just finished a week long in service training outside the city. Volunteers with experience, PC trainers, and Panamanians all helped train people from my group in the specific sections that they needed help in. I went to sessions on aqueducts, latrine maintenance, grant proposals. I found it very interesting and it was also good to just see the other people from our group. Panama City is really hoppin and reminds me of Miami. It is definitely strange seeing very hip people, posh stores and restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe, and knowing they are in the same country that we serve.

This guy actually is currently representing my district in Panama City. How can you trust a politician that you can't see his eyes. I think they are using his campaign banner as a shower curtain.

Chanda, one of the many dogs that belongs to my host family had 4 puppies under my house.

My host sister Juanita preparing 'pita'. This is the plant that the fibers for the traditional purses come from. First you scrape the leaves so it is just the strands then you wash it, dry it and roll it into thread.

My host brother Justin and friend Gerardo went up to some cow pastures. Justin is a cow tecnico and used to work with milk cows. He is certified in all sorts of things about cows and tells great stories about charging bulls, horse back riding and milk. We went up to this pasture to 3 cows that our family owns. In this photo we were putting salt on our hands for the cows to lick. They love that stuff!
The baby calf, maybe 1 month old.

Justin, is probably my best friend in town. He has some knowledge of the outside world because he went to high school, and technical school, and has traveled around Panama. He is a huge WWF fan.

My host family purchased 50 pollitos from the Ministry of Agriculture. It is like an investment, all you have to do is feed them, and they grow fat. You buy them for about 50 cents a bird and can sell them for about $5. They lantern is there so they eat at night as well as day and it provides them with a little warmth is the cool nights here.
I ran into these guys on the way to working on the aqueduct. This baby looked so cute and so tough at the same time. You can't see but they were actually on their way to the health center because the baby has leshminieasis on its face. Lesh, as its more commonly known is a flesh eating virus that basically causes an un healing scab. It comes from sand flies that have been snacking on sloths. The treatment is very harsh shots. 3 times a day for 3 weeks straight. Basically its no fun to get.

My neighboring volunteer Sara is an agricultural volunteer and put together this cacao workshop. She organized for 2 tecnicos (experts or anyone with training) on cacao to come visit and explain how to properly prune a tree and keep it disease free. The tecnicos were trained in an early program by PC. So this class was a practice for them too. To me it sounded like they really knew what they were talking about.

Here he is up in the tree pruning cacao. You want to cut some of the leaves down to let more light through, as well as giving more energy to the blooming cacao mallorcas.

This is a view of the river nearby. I have yet to go swimming in it. It looks deep but not all that clean.

The man standing is the head of ANAM which is like the forest service or EPA. Because my town is the largest in Palo Seco national forest reserve ANAM visits quite frequently. This guy was born in my site and has much family here. It is interesting that he has so much power coming from such a humble backround. He is a great example and roll model for people that want to succeed in Valle.

This meeting was held by the NGO that is in my site called ASAFRI that works with reforestation, cacao, and protecting Palo Seco. Currently there is much heated discussion because a major hydroelectric dam is going to be constructed. It will not directly affect any one in my town but some people have farms of family in the affected area. The people of my town feel as if they are being left out of the loop in discussions with the national government, ANAM and the dam company AES.

This ladies and another guy Lorenzo are trying to start a bread making company in town. Currently all the bread at the stores is brought in every few days from a bakery afuera. Their bread was good and they are also planning on making sweets but it definitely has a long way to go before they can beat out the real bakery. They also sell it out of their house and lack a real schedule. I try to buy it as frequently as I can to support the local economy.

When I was talking to them they invited a community member named Ortencio, that is one of the few to actually leave the town and go to college. He is living in Panama City now working with a large cement company. When he came they people in town new he had money, and was part of a 'development' organization. These bread bakers solicited his help. They are very good at appearing organized and professional, even though I am almost positive they had no future business plan or anything. They reminded Ortencio that they are family and explained how they just needed a little money to get their business off the ground. They even presented a letter that was formally asking for money. This appeared to be very organized, whoever I knew that they had just jotted the letter down moments before his arrival and had hurried to put their aprons on and look busy before he showed up.

I assumed that the money they needed was to purchase flour and other ingredients and tools in bulk. Instead they asked for a new oven. They already have a regular cooking oven (kinda of extravagant for my town where most people cook with fire) but said they needed a new one exclusively for the business. Sure enough Ortencio reached in his pocked and gave this guy Lorenzo $200 for a new oven, explaining that it was a from his organization and they need to pay him back. I am very interested to see if they will pay any of it back, but I suppose it is possible if their panaderia takes off. This is a great example of the type of development that has existed in my site, and many others. When people just give things away it makes the people believe that they don't need to work to get things just beg. It also causes them to expect gifts from development workers. 'Joe what are you going to build for us? What are you going to bring us?'

This is the so called 'inter-americana' highway connecting my house and my host families house. For almost the whole month of January it was raining almost every other day, so it was constantly muddy. I had a miniature 'junta' where I bought pig (freshly slaughtered in town for 70 cents a pound) for my host family and all the kids helped me cut down the trees and haul gravel and sand from the river. This has been great as i no longer need to where rubber boots to go to the bathroom. It is still missing a little more gravel though.

How to build a water captation

2007-01-18T07:34:00.001-08:00

Here you can see one of the many steep hills and the people carrying sand and cement up the hill. Sometimes 3 horses and many little kids all helped out. It truly is a community project. In this pictures you can also see a guy carrying up a chainsaw, that we used to cut a tree to make the concrete forms. The area at the bottom hill is the location where we were originally going to but the water tank, but after doing the elevation survey we decided to move it up to more where the picture was taken.
Taking a break after climbing the hill. The men would carry 100 lbs bags of cement up in teams of two. While one was carrying the bag on his shoulders the other would be walking and resting. When they changed they would just go back to back and change the bag to the other guys shoulders. I don´t understand how they could walk with that weight when there was so much mud.
From left to right is Ramón and Emilio. Ramón is the vice president and Emilio the President of the aqueduct. We had just finished the last part of the survey. You can see my notebook for recording angles and distances, the abney level in my hand. Ramón has the 30 m tape. Emilio has a stick that is cut to my eye level so that they survey is that much more accurate.

This is the clay dam that I made to channel all the water from the spring into the 4 in pipe. The pipe came from a community member that has a fish tank, it worked excellent in keeping the construction area dry.

This is the first level of the foundation. You can see the pipe to on the right. On both sides of this small valley is rock. In order to strengthen the foundation even more we hammered the rebar into the rock on each side.
A group of muchachos that were great workers. This is the area that we stored the sand, and cement before it was mixed.
Here is a great shot of the construction area. You can see the toma ( spring box) area where all the people are in the shadows. The flat part below was expanded and used for mixing concrete. In this picture they are bending rebar there. You can also see a second smaller tube on the right used to divert a small creek. This water was used for cooking and washing sand.
This is the master mason Jose Molina. He has built 5 other toma de aguas and has plenty of experience. I pretty much let him lead the entire construction effort and just tried to make technical pointers, and give him reminders of things that we need to do. You can also see in the background the actual ´ojo de agua´ where the water comes out of the rock face.

Here you can see the trail as it approaches the toma. In the distance the really bright object is the rancho or hut that was constructed to save the bags of cement, tools, and it is where the fire was made for cooking. There was a table there, for drying the pots and pans and preparing food. Usually we would eat bananas cut from a nearby tree, and sardines that someone brought up.

We would head up to the toma around 8 in the morning. The community was notified that we are leaving by blowing into a conch sea shell. I was pretty good at doing this so they always gave it to me. After you left town it was about an one and a half hours walking up steep muddy hills. We would stop working around 430. We would then discuss what materials need to be brought up the next day, and what goals we planned to accomplish. I would write this down and give copies to the mason and the president.

There was mostly 5 or 6 people that had some construction experience and helped with the actual construction or the form work and rebar placing. This is them.

This picture is after we poured the foundation. There was two levels, the first had reinforcing, and the second was just concrete with large rocks. The bottom most pipe in the picture is the clean out pipe or scour, used to remove dirt that may settle and soap when your cleaning the toma. The next pipe is the actual exit of water where we will connect the aqueduct. The top two parallel pipes are the overflow pipes. In case the aqueduct needs to be turned off for maintenance.

Many Ngobes do not smile for pictures, so even if they look stone faced or scary, they are really nice guys.
Jose y Jose before the forms were put on the spring box. The vertical plastic tubes are used to cover up the rebar so it won´t rust with the constant water that will be flowing through it.

Emilio and Jose with the initial excavation of the toma.

One of the views you get walking up in the morning sometimes.

Joe´s Birthday Bash

2007-01-18T07:34:00.000-08:00

The other day I went to visit one of my friends Abel in a neighboring town. I am teaching him English maybe once a week. He is a teacher but now this time of year the teachers have off so he lives at his house. I went out there to meet some of the people in his town and check out his composting latrine which still needs to be completed. He also wants to improve his family´s aqueduct. His brother had captured this owl, I´m not quite sure how, or why he still had it. He did say that they don´t like them because they eat the baby chickens.

I celebrated my Birthday in my site which was a great time. I invited a few of my neighboring volunteers to stay over the night. Kevin, Ryu, Brandon and Sara all came over. Sara brought back gifts from my family from her recent trip to the states. We made fried rice for ourselves and my host family. My host sister also made Johnny Cakes which is like a form of bread you can make without a real oven. They come out looking like buns, or bagels without the hole. I opened my presents, and then someone through flour on me. I still can´t figure out who it was because it was really dark. Apparently, this is a Panamanian tradition. I think it comes from the fact that the load up their piñatas up with flour, so when they break everyone gets white. They couldn´t afford a piñata so i guess they just throw the flour instead.

Later that night my friend Kevin brought a special present. When he showed up he was carrying a cubo. Cubo are 5 gallon buckets that are used for everything here from storing food to doing laundry. Kevins cubo was fool of ice and beer. We had a great time just catching up on our sites, and talking about all sorts of things from politics to why living in the campo can be suck sometimes.

Rather than walking down the stairs from my house ,putting boots on and crossing the muddy path to use the latrine I always pee off my porch at night. Now it was quite dark this night, no moon, and we were using a few candles out on the porch. Someone looked over at the side of the porch we had been peeing off and noticed that it had been peed all over!!! Cochino! ( see pics below) No one ever confessed to who it was.

Kevin, Brandon and Ryu

Getting my house ready

2006-12-31T09:00:00.000-08:00

This is a sample of the traditional bag the sell in my site. This artisan group just received money from and NGO to build a house to sell, and distribute the wares.

This is my buddy Jose Carlos. I like him because he´s cute, nice and has my own name. He has been really sick recently and not had any appetite. What he does eat he usually throws up. He also has much skin peeling off his legs and arms. It looks like his legs are dirty but thats what it actually is. I think he has a vitamin deficiency and some sort of stomach parasite. If anyone else wants to diagnose feel free.

After I had set up my bed, mosquito net, all my clothes, and put up wall decorations, I found out that MINSA, the ministry of health is coming to Valle to spray every house for Malaria. This meant that I had to take everything out of my house, so the guys could come in and spray down the walls. A year the was a Malaria outbreak, and now every 3 months they come to fumigate the houses, until the community tests completely negative for Malaria.

Me with a friend's pet parrot.

The fumigating man, and my 75 cent Panama hat.

For new years the burn a doll, I´m not exactly sure why but I know its a tradition.

Here is the label of the fumigant, kinda scary stuff, but at least I don´t have mosquitoes in my house. I heard before they sprayed, ants were everywhere in houses, and the mosquitoes were much worse. Now there are rarely any mosquitoes, only at dusk by the swamp. Below is the residue left over from spraying, you can see where a piece of paper was on the ground.

Now that I am no longer sharing my house with the teacher, I have started making some improvements. There was a bunch of lumber and palm fronds to build a new rood being stored under my house. I moved them further under my house so no you can hang out below my house, and play marbles, are a number of other games. While moving all this material we found several animals. First 2 rats ran out from underneath.

This duck had made its home, under the palm fronds and was sitting on all her eggs. We moved her and the eggs to a new house under the new pile of wood.

This huge toad was also under there.

There are several of the land crabs that live in mud and eat insects.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-31T08:26:00.000-08:00

Well I ended up being Santa Clause for the Christmas Eve party in my community. I went into Changuinola and bought 3 yards of red cloth and cotton, as well as various other parts of the costume one of the several tailors in town made the whole costume for me.
Christmas Eve ended up being quiet the day. I went into the city to buy all the sand for our aqueduct. I rode back to my town in the sand truck with a cracked windshield and a holes in the floor. I was skeptical that it would be able to climb the hills to my town. The truck ended up stalling on the steepest hill, and we rolled backwards with out no motor. That was probably the scariest moment I´ve had in Panama, as I knew if the driver cut the wheel too hard either way we would either crash into the rock side of the mountain or roll down the side. When we got to the bottom he went to raise the hydraulic lift to dump some sand out so we could climb the hill and practically dumped all if it out. We spent about 45 minutes shoveling it back into the bed in the blazing sun.
I arrived showered and immediately needed to get ready for Santa. I was helped by several members of my family, they assembled my beard and ran around and tied up the last parts of the costume. The plan was for me to sneak behind the stage then pop out with the bag of presents, but as I was sneaking up all the kids saw me. I started shouting HO HO HO and all the kids came running out of the awning area. The rest of the time a gave out the presents to all the kids and sweat profusely.
There was an annual Christmas volleyball game of the older guys vs the younger guys. This is the winning team, with their $40 winnings from the game.

This is Santa and Momerto who made the costume, for never making anything more that pants and uniform shirts he did a great job, I´m only lacking my glasses in this picture. Momerto is probably one of my better adult friends, he is always hanging out at my host family´s house and is in the foto of the winning team in yellow shirt.

There apparently was a Ngobe Tri-Delt at the Christmas party! Crazy!

This is the first stages of the Santa beard, with Juanita.

Santa actually at the party. Many kids were terrified of me, I think because they had never seen Santa in person, but for the most part the were all mystified. Either they didn´t know it was me or they all just couldn´t believe I dressed up like that.

More hot Volleyball action. These guys are really good, I can´t even compete with them.

Graduacion

2006-12-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

This week was Graduation at the school in town. It was a pretty big deal in town, and the parents group really came together. Here is a bunch of photos from that.
The head table with representatives from the Ministry of Education, the school directors.
(Prevent Dengue)
There have been many problems with Dengue fever in Panama city, and some of the other cities but it hasn´t really effected the rural people in the campo. There is not enough standing water here to cause much mosquitoes. In general the mosquitoes aren´t bad at all here, only when I´m near the swamp at night to do I ever get bit.
All the graduates. You can also see how many people came out to see the graduations in the back outside the roof.

This food is for the dinner of graduation which was Monday. There was tons of rice chicken and potato salad. Quiet a feast when you used to boiled bananas. All this food is cooked in the school kitchen, which is really just a shack with a few large fireplaces.

This roofing was constructed by the Padres de Familia. It was in the middle of the courtyard of the school. People sat at the tables and desk chairs of the school.

I was hanging out around the outside of the tables, because I didn´t have any one in my family graduate, and was about ready to leave when the assistant director of the school invited me to sit at the head table! It was pretty cool, being up there, but I also felt like I was eating under a microscope because everyone was looking at me.

This guys name is Jose too, he is my cousin. The ice cream man occasionally comes to town. He rolls on a motorcycle with a cooler strapped to the back. Pineapple orange ice cream cones like this are only 25 cents.

Ochoa and Betti in cafe. You need to leave the coffee beans out in the sun to dry them, and I guess they just decided to sit in it.
Ochoa!
All the mountains around my site look like this.

These are the neighbors in my hammock, they come over some times to draw pictures or just hang out.
The other day in preparation for Christmas I went out to clear the jungle to make a cow pasture. Our neighbor hood was going to receive $100, for all this work. Using the machete is really fun, it works really well. I was cutting down everything from ferns, to serious vines to 3" thick trees. I think I gained alot of respect from the men in my part of town. I ended up with some blisters on my hand and cuts from thorns. On my back in this picture I have my sheath made out of a flattened peace of PVC pipe. And yes I know I have lost alot of weight, I look real skinny in this picture huh?

Update on address

2006-12-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

This is the city closest to me, this has to go through to Panama post office then accross the country to this one. This is the least reliable but I check the most frequently, great for letters and packages of little value.

Joe Goessling
Cuerpo de Paz - Panama
Entrega General, Changuinola
Changuinola, Republica de Panama

This is probably the best bet for all other mail. This city is about 5 hours away and I go maybe once a month, it is more secure than the above address, but still not as good as the Panama City address.

Joe Goessling
Cuerpo de Paz - Panama
Entrega General, David
Chiriqui, Republica de Panama

Dia de La Madre and tons of Pictures

2006-12-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

So, I finally ran out of room on my camera, so I decided to dump tons of photos on here. Hopefully you´ll get a better idea of my site, my family and what we did for mothers day.

I took this morning as I was leaving my site. Down below is the Valley where my town is. You can really see how the mist stays in town until the sun really comes out to burn it all off. This is why it gets so cold at night and continues in the morning. Sometimes I where I sweatshirt in the morning. This morning for my ride to the city I tumbla un maderina, (knocked an orange out of the tree) in my front yard. I also brought a cacao fruit, this may not have been the best idea because the shell is thick and heavy. Cacao is kinda like a pumpkin in that it has a really think outside and seeds on the inside. I like to just suck on the seeds on the inside as a snack.

This is my brother Justin next to the Cacao that is drying in the sun. In order to make chocolate you have to sun dry it, then roast it then, grind it then cook it again and add sugar milk vanilla or whatever. This isn´t even like real chocolate its just what the make hot chocolates with here.

These are my two host sisters, Juanita (left) and Josmira or Betti (right). (Betti´s father is latino so she has much longer eyelashes and curly hair.) For mothers day we cooked up spaghetti with spam, as a topping for boiled bananas. You can see pretty much all the ingredients that we used behind on the shelf/board on the wall.

This is Lucindo, he´s my one of my counterparts sons. He is wearing the traditional Ngobe bag called a chacara. These come in literally all sizes. Some are big enough to haul 100 lbs bags of cement, while others are as small a change purses and are warn like a shoulder bag. Lucindo had a chacara full of bananas because he was coming back from the finca (farm). He also had a really colorful bird on a string.

This is a big hydroelectric dam that I go over every time I cross the mountains to the big city of David. They are planning on building a dam like this on a river relatively near my site. The dam company is pumping tons of money into the community as part of their ¨social outreach¨. For example they have probably purchased the soccer teams jersey for the past 4 years, and also they bought a truck for the junta comunal (town committee). This has good intentions but from a sustainable point of view it is not the best. Who will pay when the truck breaks, who buys the gas? etc.

Juanita is cooking up the chicken that was a gift to the mothers eating in our house that day. You can see here the fogon. This is 3 rocks used to create a tripod that and wood put in between. Usually they light it with matches and a plastic bag. Its horrible for the environment and our lungs but it works great. You can also see the big white water tank that the family uses when the water goes out. The water goes out when we havn´t had rain for a few days in a row.

These are all the madres that we cooked for. From the left is a house guest who I don´t know, my mom Elvira, my sister Lucy, and my aunt Ines. We made fried rice. I got the recipe out of the PC Panama cookbook which is written by volunteers, its really helpful in utilizing the ingredients you can get out in your site.

This is my host mom and her daughter Lucy, who is also a mom. They are putting the dried cacao back in the sack to grind later. You can also see my bedroom window in the back round.

I don´t even know this little guy´s name. But he was at the mothers day celebration in a full USA soccer kit.

This is Juanita and my grandma Nena. She isn´t sure how old she is but best guesses are in mid 70´s to 80´s. She has a really bad knee that she can´t bend, and walks everywhere with a cane (stick). Walking causes her tons of pain but occasionally she walks the 15 minutes to the finca to pick coffee.

This is the official mothers day celebration for my part of town. The men built this building with the blue tarp awning, they also cooked bought presents and organized activities. You can see the girl in the pink with the traditional Panamanian hat singing a Decima song she wrote about mothers day, while the two other guys played guitar.

After each gift was announced the giver kissed the receiver. This is my neighbor Berto. I´m working with him on a side project because he wants to write a book in the Ngobe dialect on natural medicine and dyes. He believes that as the culture from away diffuses into town that the traditional knowledge will be lost. I´m helping him find a similar book in Spanish he can use as a guide.

Pinata! This is actually just a decorated box. It is tied together really well and full of candy as well as flour. It was hilarious when it exploded, everyone was covered in flour. The women are usually very reserved but when it burst open it was a free for all. It may also have been because there was dollar bills inside too.

Here are all the fathers that cooked (or allegedly cooked) food for everyone. There is chicha (juice) rice and chicken.

All the moms from my part of town that participated. I think there was a total of 3 of these parties thrown around town, and they are planning a similar event for Christmas.

Victor singing songs he wrote for the mothers. My neighbor Eberto, has two guitars and when I have free time I want to learn the traditional strumming patterns.

Ebertos son Inel giving his mom a present.

Jam Tracks of Panama

2006-12-10T11:38:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone in case it was any surprise Panamanians love their music. In my community people commonly walk around with a simple AM/FM radio around their neck and music playing, sometimes even larger ones almost like ghetto blasters. Its just like being on a college campus with all the ipods.
Popular music here includes tipica which features an accordion. You can listen here http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6852747/a/Dale+Donde+Mas+Le+Duela.htm
That is Samy y Sandra Sandoval, they are probably the most famous Tipica singers still performing, they are brother and sister.
Other music they play alot is reggaeton, and occasionally reggae. They also have Decima which is to guys singing back at forth at each other. Kinda like a freestyle rap battle. They also occasionally bark like dogs back and forth. Its really hard to explain but hilarious to listen to. I don´t quiet know enough Spanish and slang to understand the majority but I like what i do understand.

So when I do listen to my crank powered radio I listen to a station that plays alot of American music, because its a touch of home. They really like the 80's here. I started writing down some of the songs I heard. Here is goes.

Junior Senior - Don´t stop the beat
Matisyahu - king without a crown
No doubt - Hella Good
Straight up no tell me do you want to love me for ever, oh oh oh
Beatles - She loves you
I´m too sexy
Don´t stop believin
Hey ya
We built this city on rock and roll
Walk like an Egyptian
Wham!
Boston
Fastball - They way
Los Lonely Boys and Santana

Mixed among these is Panamanian songs and other 80´s songs I have never heard. That's it for music, if you don´t use http://www.pandora.com/ for music you should check it out.

Independence day Parade

2006-12-01T08:48:00.000-08:00

I'm doing well in my site. I got to celebrate Thanksgiving with 115 other volunteers in the mountains of Volcan Buru which is the tallest mountain (volcano) in Panama. Being 50 degrees it was cold up there, I even got too wear pants and a long sleeve shirt. We stayed in a resort/lodge, I shared a suite with our own wood stove and mini kitchen. There was 5 turkeys, ham, stuffing, gravy even cranberry sauce which I think was imported from the States. The town where we stayed, Cerro Punta, is located near the national park that has virgin rain forest. It is also in the Chiriqui region that supplies most of the fruits and vegetables for the rest of Panama. Most of the veggies we ate where locally grown. For a snack I walked down the road and got fresh strawberries and cream... delicious!

The aqueduct work is progressing along. I hope to start construction this month. Its kinda of strange that there is really not much Christmas here. In some ways it was nice not to be bombarded with the commercialism. Its just not that big of a holiday here. It is also hard because the people in my town don't really have enough money to buy presents for each other. I heard that usually they slaughter a pig and eat it for Christmas day. There are some plans underway to get together for New Years and have a gift exchange.

Right now I am in my closest town, called Almirante. It is a real cross of cultures, there are the indigenous Ngobe, Latinos, and Jamaicans and other people from the islands of the Caribbean. You commonly here their 3 languages, Ngobe (dialecto), Spanish, and Guari Guari. Guari Guari is kinda like how people speak in Jamaica but a bit different. I can{t really understand it at all. The other day I was riding back to my town in the 4x4 taxi, next to a drunk guy who thought that he could speak English, because he knew Guari Guari. This didn't work out at all, and he kept shaking my hand saying 'we are friends' until eventually he passed out.

My friend Brandon has a blog with different pictures. He lives right near me if you want to check it out.
www.panamericanproceeding.blogspot.com

On Tuesday I came to Almirante for Independence day from Spain. There was a huge parade in town. Marching bands from all over came to Almirante. Here is a bunch of pictures.

I'm not sure where this band is from but I like there Panama flags. Some of the bigger bands had cornets like these. I was talking with the band director from my town and told him how I used to play trombone. Later he told me that he wants to get cornets for next year, and that he wanted to know if I could play trombone. So who knows next year maybe I'll be marching.

This is my little sister, Betti. She is a baton twirler. They have all sorts of organized moves they do all organized by whistle. I think that is general the band is really good for the students, because it provides an after school activity, learning structure and discipline and lets them go see new places.

This is my neighbor Sara, she lives about 15 minutes away in the town that I'm building the aqueduct. This guy was sitting next to us on the curb, and was obviously a little drunk. Apparently he was alot drunk and just straight up past out. People kept walking around him like it was no big deal.

This is the band from my town. You can also so most of the teachers that march behind the students. Usually the teachers outfits match the students. The bands is made up of the drums and the Lida's which are like xylophones.

Halloween Pictures

2006-11-13T14:01:00.000-08:00

After our group swore in we went had a freee weekend to celebrate and went to the beach town of Santa Clara. We all stayed in cabanas which were right on the water. The last night we had a halloween party. The theme was that your costume has to be something related to Panama. I was Balboa the Conquistador.

This is a group shot of all the Environmental Health volunteers. It is taken right outiside the Panama Canal museum in the old city. Yes I´m the only person wearing a blazer...I brought it so I wore it.

This is a group of us inside the museam, left to right is Ryu, Colin, myself, Brandon ( all of these people are engineers in Bocas) Mellisa, Jack, Mo, and Kevin.

Colin and Ryu as a banana tree and someone eating a banana.

Me and Kevin rocking out on the assault rifle and sword. He was Panama National Police.

This is one of the two couples that are in our group. The trainors are in EH, and were trash. In many places Panama doesn´t have the best trash disposal. They even had a condom!!

This is Mo and Victoria as trees or the jungle. And yes those are freshly cut banana leaves.

This is it... Balboa in all his glory. Next to me is Kasey, he is a yes man, or someone one pushing for the Canal Expansion. He actually had the real pamflets.

Site info

2006-11-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

I´ve been at my site for a week now and have been soooo busy. In the past week I have been to the neiboring community to hike up the mountain to see the spring and tank locations of the aquaduct I will be building. it is quite a hike yet really beutiful, probabably the closest to being in a rainforest I have ever been. There was also a meeting to start planing the aquaduct. It is really frustrating because the community wants to go go go, but the design isn´t finished as thereare no acurate elevation measurments. Today I am in the Provincial capital, buying tools to start clearing the path for the tubing. The mason I am working with is really knowledgable and has already built 4 aquaducts with the PC.

Novemeber is also the month of festivities here. There was parades in my town back to back for the Independence from Columbia and flag day. The band has alot of drums and xzylophones?? Every day I try to play soccer at 5 till it gets too dark to see and the bats come out. Ussually there is a competitive 6 on 6 soccer game, and a volleyball game everyday.

I have been in good health and am sleeping on a hammock, which is surprisingly comfortable. I have my own room in a house that I am sharing with a teacher. My host family are neighbores and are very welcoming esspecially the kids. I¨ve been eating alot of boiled bananas and Pifa, which is kinda like a dry squash. Occasionally i go to the store and buy rice and lentils or chicken for dinner for everyone.

My digital camera has been having some serious problems which I think are related to the humidity, and my cell phone gets horrible service. You can call and leave a message and I can call you back on the pay phone if you would like. Right now I have to go and get some more things organized while I´m in the Provincial capital for the aquaduct.

I got a cell phone

2006-10-29T14:27:00.000-08:00

Big news!! Peace Corps gives us cell phones!!

6576 1214 To dial from the states use 011 + 507+ 65761214

I can reveive calls for free and I´m pretty sure I get decent service in my site.

My address also changed slightly.
For conventional mail:

Joseph Goessling
Cuerpo de Paz / Panama
0834-02788 Entrega General
Republica de Panama

Well I´m finally off to my site for real. Its kinda scary know that my service is offically begining and that I won´t be around gringos for long periods of time. I´m also nervous because unlike my site visit there is no schedule now. I hope to stay busy to keep my mind off off of how different it is. Luckily I have alot of things I could be doing. They have a daily soccer game at 5 every day that is pretty competitive. I also have alot of work to do, the PC requires a lengthy community assesment to be completed as well as a health survey. This helps establish what work needs to be done in the community and is a measure of progress.
Lastly the community next to mine has all the money the design for a new aquaduct. They have alot more work to do before construction actually starts. Most of the aquaducts here are not really engineered, they just make sure the water source is higher than the town. I´m bringing an altimeter to roughly measure the elevations. This way you can do pressure calcuations to possibly change PVC pipe sizes and save money. I need to do this for the new aquaduct as well as the current one in my town that is having problems. All very exciting stuff.

In other news we were sworn in as official volunteers at a nice ceremony at the Canal Museum in Panama city. A representative from the Embassy was there as well as a few other government agency people and tons of current PC volunteers. There was only one other kid that wore a jacket. ( I was told before coming that I should bring a blazer for swear in... in reality half the kids didn´t even bring ties. )

We went out in Panama city to a bar called Unplugged that played tons of rock and metal music yet was still the happening scene. You could rent a hookah their for $5 bucks and there weas tons of vlunteers there to celebrate with us.. Beers were consumed and the most random guest showed up.

DREW from Villanova stepped out of a car while we were hanging out at the bar. I had no idea but he was travelling through the Americas, he had no idea I was doing PC in Panama. He was had just visited a guy on the rugby team Breslin who is doing PC in Guetemala. We caought up on a bunch of things and then said our good byes.

Canal Expansion

2006-10-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Despite all the crazy news in the world about Korea the big news in Panama is a about the Canal Vote. The Vote is to decide if the a new set of locks should be built to accommodate Â¨post panamax shipsÂ¨ these are boats that are too wide for the canal right now. There is a definite need for this as some of these boats go around soutAmericaca, our just ship there goods across the country. Some boats also wait days to get through to Canal because it is operating at close to full capacity. The government and the Canal authority ( the company that took control of the canal after the US gave to Panama) hava lotot of money invested into the Ã¿esÂ¨campaign. In trainingaing village many t-shirts and stickers were given out. The Â¨noÂ¨campaign is a much more grass roots anti-establishment organization. From what I can see the two sides have the following arguments. YES There is a definite need for a larger canal due to global trade. The canal has long been tied to PanamaÂ´s history and a vote no would be turning your back on your history. It will bring money to the country and all the money to build it is going to be collected through raised tolls on boats. I heard that the financing of the canextremelyxtremly hard because you are essentially predicting what global trade will be in years to come. Lastly they say that the construction will provide tons of direct and indirect jobs.
NO
The no basicallybasicly assert that the government is corrupt (corruption is a major problem in Panama) and that all the money will stay with the wealthy people. They also say that there is not environmental study and the impacts could be huge. They say there are also some scenarios where Panama would end up footing the bill too.

On to the pictures.

This is the house will I will be living after I stay with my host family for 3 months. My host family is a mother with a few of her kids ranging from the oldest daughter that has kids of her own to a young child. They live right across the way. The house has 2 rooms in the back: a kitchen and a bedroom and a large porch. Right now a school teacher is living there but she will be moving out.
We had a so called Â¨Tom Selleck ChallengeÂ¨ you can judge the winncrewis crewis all of the guys (there are only 2 girls) from my training group that are living in the Bocas province. They are all really fun guys and I canÂ´t wait to hang out with them even more. Clockwise from myself is Ryu and Brandon who are Masters International students. This means they are getting their engineering masters by doing Peace Corps, they have taken caqueducts aquaducts and other related things so they are a great resource. They also have known each other from freshman year of college and by shear chance ended up in Panama together and in Bocas. Jack is next, he is fluent in Spanish and also was a former volunteer from Bangledesh. Unfortunatly all the volunteers there were evacuated because of violence. Colin and Kevin are next and they are just straight up chill dudes.

These are all pictures in VicenteÂ´s house. The pic above you can see him in the hammock with his youngest son. As a whole all the kids were very quiet. Above that picture is Roy he is always smiling and is also deaf. There is not much programs for deaf kids here so IÂ´m not sure what is going to happen with him.

I think they are about in the middle of the range of wealth in the community. They could afford to buy rice and sardines occasionally but still do not have any excess of spending money. Vicente is 35 and in the shape of a high school wrestler, he walked way faster than me and still carried a Chacara (traditional bag, you can see small ones hanging) full of bananaÂ´s. IÂ´d say it weighed easily 60 pounds.

Valle

2006-10-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

I just got back from visiting my site for 5 days. It is pretty big with a few tores, a big soccer field and a brand new school that kids come to from all over the area. I lived with my work partner, Vicente. Vicente is the president of one of the 2 aquaducts in town. He is very quiet but really smart and a very respected person in town. He took me all over and introduced me to different families.

One of the days I hiked up this montain on one of the sides of the valley to go to my work partners farm. Here is the view of the town from way up. The only building you can really see i the school with the blue roof. The government is just finishing this and rumor has it that the President may be taking a helicopter to come see it and meet with people in November.

This is taken from Vicentes house of the new school you can also see some of the soccer field which is all dirt. Every day at 5 they have a soccer game for adults/teenagers. Its pretty competitive and they are all really good. Valle feilds two soccer teams for the local league and 2 baseball teams.
This is Vicent and his freind Benecio on top of the town new water tank. A NGO came in a built this take which has a sand filter without consulting anyone. The NGO did it as a learning project for its workers, however it has really messed up water in part of the town. I{m not exactly sure why but after the tank was built part of the town (the part where I will be living) goes without water for a few days at a time. This will probabably be one of the first things I work on.

This photo is also from the hike to Vicentes finca or farm. You can see the ocean and the nearby port town of Almirante. This is the town where Chiquita Banana is based out of. They have huge boats with the Chiquita logo as well as a big packing plant. All around the region are banana farms.

More random pics

2006-10-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Once again not alot of time to update the blog hopefully next weekend will be better. These are just some more random pictures from my camera. This one above is in Old Panama City. You can see the really old chuch as well as a pretty serious baseball game. The beach looks really nice but you would have to be crazy to swim near the city. It makes Boston harbor look like a pool. I was told there are no sewage treatment plants in Panama city and they just pump it out into the ocean.

The Peace Corps trainees put on a Bingo night to raise money for the library in town. The library was really lacking on books. They had abunch of high school text books from the 70çs and a really old encyclopedia. We raised about $300 from selling bigo cards and food. It was a great community activity, many family made food and helped sell it. Other people set up the sound system and there was even traditional Panamanean dances done by kids. We used peaces of corn for the chips.

In this picture is my buddy Colin and the family of my Spanish teacher. The guy with that hat used to work for Peace Corps and speakes fluent english which was kinda strange to have a redular conversation, or know that he can always understand us talking. You get really used to speaking in english and assuming that no one can understand. At one point my freind came up and said ¨Hey Vicky has 3 kids? she looks really good¨ he didn´t know at all that her husband was there and understood it all. ACKWARD!

This is a picture of my twin sisters in the traditional naguas. My families Ngobe frinds in town made them for the girls.

This week I am going to my site for the first time, and will be meeting up with my work partner to plan out the first 3 months in site.

Tech week and partying

2006-10-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

Tech week was a alot of hard work. We built 4 composting latrines for another Ngobe vilage.

A composte latrine is essentially just a big box you poop in and then put sawdust or other dry material in, and in 6 months it turns into composte and you take it out a side door. Not to sound like a huge nerd but these things are really great. They are good because they don't spread shit around so people don't get sick, and you can also use the composte for crops. I like them really though because they don't smell and there are no flies. This may not sound like a huge deal, but I havn't actually sat on a latrine seat since I've been here due to the stench mosquitos and cockroaches which are all overpowering.

The week was a great success on thursday I woke up after sharing a double bed with my buddy Rob and walked to the creek to wash my face. I'm about there and notice a lot of guys down there with a fire going. When I arrive they are slaughtering a 90 pound pig!! In the same river I came to wash up in! They ended up smoking the pig for a few hours with banana leaves. It was soooo good.

No more time in the internet cafe so I need to go.

Pictures from Nutivi

2006-09-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

All of these pcitures are from the Ngobe village of Nutivi where a group of EH (environmental health) trainees had our culture week. The week consisted of Ngobe (pronounced No bae) language clases in the morning and classes about culture in the afternoon. We also built a rainwater collection system for the school and taught a charla, I did handwashing to 2nd grade.

It was a little hard dealing with their culture. They do not talk much unless they are talked to so comunication is a little bit taxing. Everyone speaks spanish and are very freindly besides that. To get there we needed to take a 4 hour boat ride across the bay and up a river. The river was a little bit hairy at times and we needed to get out and walk a bit. It kinda reminded me of the Saco but more rocky, and fast and with indengionous people living on it.

A quick rundown of the pictures. There first pic in the upper left is of volley ball game. They have nightly games and are really good despite the fact that I am taller than the vast majority of people. The gringos lost but put up a good fight. The next is a huge bamboo tree, it was just so big it deserved a picture. Bamboo good for tons of things from building pull up bars to houses. The next pic is just one more from when I was painted, its old. Lastly there was a beutiful river we all got to go swimming in. We jumped out of a tree into the river and also used scuba masks to search for shrimp. In the backround you can see the mountains and a vilage up on the hillside.

Es todo, next week is tech week where I learn to build composting latrines bien pretty.

My site assignment.

2006-09-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

Less than an hour ago I found out that I am going to Valle in Bocas del Toro. Bocas is the province in the north west of Panama that borders on Costa Rica. My site description includes: you will be living in a tropical paradise surrounded by lush forests. The site has about 1000 Indindgenous Ngobe people. The town is accesible by a Chiva which is essentially a truck that drives about an hour from the main road. A previous Peace Corps volunteer has designed a water system for this town so I have plenty of work to do upon arrival.
Bocas is also a upcoming tourist region. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocas_del_Toro_Province
(you know I love that wikipedia!)

Thats all for now, we are going out to celebrate now!

Pics from my site visit.

2006-09-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

This is Alan with the worm box we made. It may not look like alot but it will really make your garden grow. That is also the area where we lit the fire to smoke the bats out.
This is when I was getting painted up by Alan´s Abuela. You can´t really see the paint because it goes on semi clear and needs to dry in order to darken.
This is us in the dug out canoe. I was in the middle and with out a peace of bamboo so i mostly bailed water because the boat was a bit leaky.
This is after we caought all the fish. You can really see how painted I am with this. More pictures to come but the blog is kinda a pain in the butt.

PICTURES!

2006-09-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

This is a group of us in a Peace Corps Land Cruiser coming back from vaccinations.

This is my sister Emmy and one of the two twins (I can´t tell them apart!) this is also a nice view out of the back of my house. I spend alot of time out here because the house doesn´t get many breezes. You can see right above the chair my shower with the blue tarp as a curtain. For a while there was a birds nest with little birds in it. They must have learned to fly because they are no longer there.

This is my aunt, Naidja, preparing some ojaldre. Ojaldre is basicly fried dough, it is ussually served for breakfast some times with cheese but never with powerderd sugar. This is also the extent of our kitchen. There is no running water but the gas stove is behind her. Much of the high powered cooking (boiling water for rice or making soup) is done by my father outside using wood. I think my family is different than most because my dad enjoys cooking ( he used to be a chef). Other typical dishes include bullo which is crushed corn in a tube, white rice with a small amount of vegetables and some chicken. There in general is alot of fried food, fried hot dogs, frid chicken and more I can´t think of right now. I love it but know its not too healthy.

Here is a current volunteer that meet us at the airport. He visitied the same Embera site that I did but got a different design than mine.

Horse back riding, spear fishing and bat killing

2006-09-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend I visited Alan at an Embera site. WHAT A WEEKEND!
This indigneous group was relocated when a major hydroelectric dam was built about 20 years ago and flooded out there community. The government cleared a bunch of land and told them that this was to be there new town. These people did not used to live in communities but rather as large family groups in the jungle. Anyways now to the exciting part.

I showed up friday afternoon and pretty much hung out. Saturday after breakfast we had a matanza de mursialagos (bat killing) Alan just moved into a really nice house that is up about a meter off the ground with a roof made of palm fronds (pencha) His problem is that bats also live in his pencha. Now we checked and they are not vampire bats but its still very unerving to wake up and have bat shit on top of your mosquito net. His roof covers his porch and part of the porch is not finished. So we built a small fire under the unfinished part to smoke the bats out. We got up in his rafters with broom handels. There were also a a handful of kids around with small clublike sticks. We started shaking the rafters and bats just start flying out. It was just like hitting a whiffle ball, they fly pretty straight but curve a bit. All in all I smacked about 7 bats out of the air.

Later that day Alans house mom painted me up with jugua, which is a fruit that stains your skin kinda like iodine. Right now i have a design covering nearly my whole body, and once again i have several pictures but no way to get them off my camera. The jagua is used in Embera festivals, and holidays. The paint goes right up to my upper lip and all the way down to my toes. I thought I stuck out as a gringo before, but now i really feel like it. I´m in the bus terminal/massive mall and people literally are stopping in place to see the blue gringo.
Saturday Alan and I also built a worm box for his new house. A worm box is alot like a composte pile except you add california redworms and a small amount horse shit. This makes aparentlly the illest fertilizer ever. Alan was going to use it for his aloe plant.

Sunday we woke up early because we were going spear fishing. We had procurred some horses which were allegedly the nicest horses in town. On a whole animals and pets are treated horrible here, and often are in a constant state of starvation or sickness. The main reason is because none of them are neutored or castrated, so yea i´ve seen my of dogs going at it.
So i got on the horse for my first time, not having any idea how to make it go or stear it. (not actually that hard) As soon as we left town i was glad i had it because we were riding through mud that was a bout knee deep and full of roots. We rode for about an hour, crossing 3 rivers.

Thisreminded me of that scene from Sleeping Beauty were then knight is being chased through the thorn forest by the dragon. Now there was no dragon, but anyone that has ever cleared land using a machete knows that when you cut a branch you cut it at and angle. This means that they are like spears or vietnamese punji stakes. Besides the pointy things i was constantly having to push away huge palm fronds or platano leaves. Lastly I was rolling with a machete in my own saddle so If I wanted to be a badass i could have unsheathed my sword.

I had 2 close calls. At one point we had just crossed a river and were about to go up the steep acent back to the other side. The other two horses did this without much problem. My horse started up and then decided to leep forward. I wasn´t ready at all and almost fell off the back.
When had finally got back my horse got a little riled up by another male horse and started bucking a bit. Luckily i got the guy under control a little bit.

The story is that when the lake was created, the missionary name Padre Pablo through about 15 Tilapia (some asian white fish) into the pond, and now they are everywhere. They can grow easily over a foot and are tasty.

We had finally arived a a marshland (the beginings of the flooded out river valley) and we got off the horses and into a dug out canoe that i can´t believe floated. We road in the canoe for about 45 minutes and finally found a spot. Using a chuso ,which is a long straight peace of metal about an eight of and inch thick. At one end there is a sharp point the other has a really think rubber band. You hold it just like a pool stick and put you thumb through a loop in the rubber band. This allows you to hold it like a pencil and just let go with one hand. The actual spear fishing is an art I don´t have a knack for. You need to exhale your breath underwater so you sink to the bottom then push yourself around on the bottom looking for a tilapia house. There are tons of plants everywhere and the water was dirty from the recent rain so visibility was way down. The native guy we were with speared about 5, and we ended up catching more with the help of someone elses gill net. We ended up riding back with about 10 Tilapia and gave all but 2 away to the neighbors.

Off to visit a volunteer

2006-09-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Que Pasa?
Today I´m going to visit a volunteer in a town in the west of Panama (closer to Columbia) called Piariati. I´m kinda nervous because it is my first time using the bus system by myself. There are 2 types of buses here. There are your traditional greyhound type busses that go from major city to major city. These buses somtimes have movies dubbed over and spanish are always freezing cold. The other type is called a Diablo Roja (Red Devil) . These are old school busses from the United States that failed the safety inspections. They are all decorated with bright murals and huge chrome tailpipes. I hear some in the city even have neon lights outside and velvet and black lights on the inside. Usually they are blasting music, and are quite cheap.

This week was much like last week. In the technical sessions we did more stuff with aquaducts and met with more current volunteers. On monday we built a rain collection system for the family that lives near our class. We cut a line in PVC and bent it around the lip of the family´s metal roof . The pipe then drains into a 55 gallon drum. This is a major improvement for the family because they used to have to walk down a steep hill to get water that was obviously dirty. In spanish class we have been discussing about alot of culture and learning slang words. One of the more loco things is ¨chicha fuerte¨Chicha is a any fruit drink, most of the time is is just powder but other times is is real juice(I drink this a pretty much every meal except breakfast which is coffee). Chicha fuerte is essecially grain alcohol mixed with a little juice. Sometimes in the campo (rural areas) they put battery acid in it!! I´m trying to stay away from that.

In other news my parents have succefully moved into Cambridge and are in the process of unpacking. They also sold my Cadillac.

Panama es muy muy bueno

2006-08-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
I finnally got to an internet cafe. I think that this is the best way for me to get in contact with everyone. Hopefully I should be able to check this about once a week.
I´m doing great. I´m at my training site in Santa Clara. Its a suburb of Panama (about an hour out) the family I´m staying with is very nice. I live in a 3 room house made of concrete block walls and no paint. My parents Jeronimo and Dilsa are both grandparents and very talkative, the father speaks slow and is very patient with my lack of Spanish and poor proneunciation, he also knows a few words in Engish so its very helpful. I have my own room with a desk and and a bed. My bed is has a thin mattress and Spongebob sheets, but he´s BLACK! I think is must be a factory defect of something. I also have my Mosquito net up to protect from Malaria and Dengue fever.
The house has no indoor plumbing only a sink outside used for just about everything from filling up pòts for cooking to washing clothes. The latrine is disgusting. It is just about completly full and I despise going in there. My father has dug out a new one (its like a 20ft hole) and is waiting to purchase the concrete supplies. I told him I would help mix this concrete up. He said he doesn´t know much about it, but the Peace Corps gave us a whole bunch of concrete info that I showed him and he was thrilled. Lastly, the entire time I have been here the elecricity has been broken. This is good and bad. It sucks cause it gets dark at 6 and then its dark, its good because there is not much else to do but talk. Alot of my friends say that their families don´t talk abd only watch TV.

Every day for I wake up around 7:00 shower in the outdoor shower, and go to Spanish class at another house. I´m in the Intermediate medium level and have 2 other people in my class. Class meets for 4 hours. The community has an amazing income disparity because the house I have classes in has a washer and dryer indoor plumbing a bathroom, a big TV and 2 cars. My Spanish has definitly been progressing but Í don´t really attribute that much to the class, its more that i just have to speak all the time.
In the afternoon I have a Tecnical class for 4 more hours. I really like this class, we meet a little out of town under a Ranchero, which is a house with Palm fronds for a roof. This class is tought by a girl names Tess who has served in Panama for 3 years. There is also almost always a current volunteer in Environmental health there to help. We have toured a nearby gravity fed water system, met with a water comittee, and had several engineering demonstrations with tubes called the maquaduct. Yesterday we built an organic garden, and learned how to sharpen and use a machete. Aparently everyone gets very familiar with the machete as you use if for everything in the field.
Outside of classes, I bought a guitar for $40 and I play to my families delight. I don´t go out on weekdays, but on the weekend and thursday night, we go to a bar which is owned by the family of one of my amigos. They have free billards and several kinds of 50 cent beers. I missed out on the soccer game because my family is very religous. I went to church for 3 hours on tuesday and 2 more today. They are a type of evangelical. Besides that everyone here is really cool, the people are much more diverse than I expected. There are people from California, to my boy Jake who´s a frat boy from Washington state, to my buddy Colin who is has a small world but a great guy. I´m the only person from New England.

Lastly I don´t know when I´ll be able to post pictures because I don´t have the chord for my camera and apparently they don´t sell that type in Panama. Yáll can get in touch with me if you write me and email.

If you want to mail me something

2006-08-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

I'll be trying to read emails and respond when I have time. I'm not sure how much internet access I will have so we shall see. I also would like regular snail mail, with pictures newspaper clippings, stickers, or some homeade art to hang up.

Some notes on sending me mail. It can take from ten days to well over a month for mail coming from Panama to the US, it is also probability similar reverse. Some advice if you’re interested in mailing me.

-Put post cards in envelopes or they may end up on the wall of a local post office.
-Number your letters you send me that way I'll know if one was misplaced.
-If you want to send me a package, please do not send anything of high value because there is no guarantee it will arrive. Packages should be sent in padded enveloped because they are opened and taxed less.

For the next three months when I'm at training I can be reached at:

(by fedex, UPS, etc.)

Peace Corps/Panamá American Embassy

Edif. 95, Ave. Vicente Bonilla

Ciudad del Saber, Clayton

Corregimiento de Ancón

Ciudad de Panamá

República de Panamá

Tel: 507.317.0038 Fax: 507.317.0809

Atentamente: Your Name

(by regular mail)

Your name

Cuerpo de Paz/Panamá

Apartado postal 0834-02788

Panamá, República de Panamá

Final Good Bye

2006-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm flying out on my flight booked and paid for by the government, tomorrow morning. I'll be in Washington D.C. for two days at the Staging event where I will learn the basics about the Peace Corps. Then I will depart for my 3 months of training outside of Panama City.

I'm still figuring out this whole blog thing. I heard there was a way to send out an email when I update. If anyone knows how to do this let me know. It seems kinda confusing right now.

I wanted to thank everyone for so many well wishes. I really has amazed me how much people have done, from good-bye calls, to the executive theme final throwdown, to all aunts uncles and little cousins all saying blessing for me at the Cape this past weekend. I hope to hear from you guys in one form or another, and have brought many pictures to remember everyone.

2006-08-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my first ever blog. Obviously it will be about my service in Panama with the Peace Corps. I decided to to a blog because it will take less time to get the word out. I think uploading huge mass emails could take quite some time on a dial up modem